watch tHe skies

Struggling to find a present for your mate who has everything? Then get him a beer belly! Play have this bizarre device that acts a bit like a Camelbak water bladder, but is designed to sit on your waist and deliver four pints of lager to your gullet without having to lift the pint glass…

Oh well it seems that although my PocketDAB is indeed a lovely bit of kit, it fails to get a signal either in the garden or in mothercare - the two places I intended to use it in. It works beautifully at the top end of the village, however it seems that we live in somewhat of a dip, and the mothercare is pretty much a faraday cage as far as dab is concerned.

So back on ebay with you, my beautiful but ultimately useless portable DAB radio….

At least the gadget monster’s call has quietened for a time.

So I didn’t buy a new iPod. Said I wouldn’t didn’t I? Not enough new features or shiny sexiness to get me to upgrade. At least not yet.

But the gadget monster needed feeding so I bought a portable DAB radio so that I can listen to the footie whilst mowing the lawn or sitting in Mothercare.

So I picked up an “as new” Pure Pocketdab 1000 on ebay for £50 (sell for over £110 in the shops), sniping the auction with my bid 20seconds from the end.

And this morning I get the following despatch notification.

“As we began preparations for dispatching your order, PURE DAB Digital Radio Walkman- PocketDAB 1000 - AS NEW,  the lights dimmed and a special glow appeared around the item.  The team joined hands in eager anticipation as it was carefully lowered into the special protective packaging.  An urgent telegram went out across town and soon everyone had rushed to wave it on its way, whilst a spectacular fireworks display went off in the background. It is with great pleasure that we can therefore confirm that your item has now departed and should be arriving shortly.

We hope you had an enjoyable experience shopping with us on eBay? If you have any questions or issues about your order please don?t hesitate to get in touch. We would very much appreciate you leaving a feedback comment for us, and we will of course do likewise if it hasn’t been done already.”

And with that, I felt all warm and fuzzy inside. My “faith in human nature” meter filled ever so slightly, and somewhere inside I cried a tear of joy. It seems that being nice to people is still ok up in Perth…

I love this quote over at the winning attitude:

“Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think.”  (Benjamin Disraeli 1804-1881)

And today I learnt that in addition to being our Prime Minister (before my time to be honest), he also wrote 17 novels (mostly Romantic fiction) and several non-fiction books. So perhaps he was on to something there.

Earlier in the year I attended Jamie Smart’s Language Of Influence workshop. A 1-day course designed to open up the uninitiated to the power of influential language, embedded commands and NLP etc.

We were talking about different types of people and how to manage them, when I asked about really negative, depressing people. You know the type - when they walk in to a room you can feel energy being sucked out, an emotional black hole of sorts. So I asked how to deal with them. Jamie’s response? “Avoid them”.

It got a laugh, but it bugged me. He is right, insofar as it is good practice to minimise time spent with people that bring you down, but what if you have to deal with them to get on? There are lots of them about, and often they seem to be the fund holders - after all if you want to watch spending, give the budget to the grumpy bloke, he is immune to all of that enthusiastic sales talk.

And so I have been searching for a more satisfactory answer and I have found some of it in an interesting post over at mindchanginghypnosis. The suggestion here is to find some common ground - perhaps sport or their family, mindful that even these topics might be depressing for them (ie perhaps they too support Arsenal, and we can be depressed together). Another useful approach is just to ask them for some good news - something that is going well in their lives. Firstly this is probably a neat interrupt for an energy leech - they probably never hear this question. Secondly it’s hard to maintain negative feelings when talking about or being asked to think about, something good.

Ultimately I think that Jamie’s advice is the right intent, but it’s a case of minimising the time you spend with those sorts of people, reducing exposure to it.

So Andy, long-time mate and godfather to my child (!) knows lots of stuff about science, and he has volunteered to share this with you, my reader. Did I say reader? Of course I meant readers.

Occasionally I’ll post his pearls of wisdom here, and the world will become a better place.

“A dog’s bark is actually the reverse of a cats meow. If a dog and a cat bark and meow simutaneously they will cancel each other out. Fact.”

There you go. More science to follow… Watch this space.

I’m currently reading “The Definitive Guide to Body language” by Barbara and Allan Pease. This is an interesting book that doesn’t get too prescriptive, yet gives general meanings and reasons behind our unconscious postures and gesticulations. This has gotten me interested in the subject, and, using the good old “tangerine” technique in meetings, I’m intrigued by the non-verbal messages that people are giving off, it is very entertaining to sit quietly in meetings and watch what people are saying to each other without a single word being uttered!

Adam Eason, on his continually interesting blog, gives us seven telltale signs of a big fat lie coming our way. So head over and have a read, and then watch with interest in your next meeting and see if you can spot the porkies - it’s almost as if you can see noses growing, Pinnochio style!

“What is?” I hear you ask. Well, I will tell you shortly. Has anyone else noticed that there are some really cool advertd on the TV at the moment. From the Citroen ice-skating Transformer, to the ever so slightly odd Orange advert with inflatable animals, my attention is often drawn more to the advert than the dross that is the stale white bread to its juicy multi-sensory filling in that sandwich that is television.

Eh? Thirty seconds aint long to entrance a consumer, and modern adverts assault you with a multisensory experience that means that adding up the total sensory stimuation time (6 times 30) might be enough to get you to part with your money.

And that’s where the music comes in. In the absence of smellyvision, advertisers search for the perfect tune to stimulate the senses, to add to the lush visuals and to create multiple anchors in your mind to get you to buy buy buy.

Does it work? Sometimes. I suspect that they get it wrong more often than right. A good example of right for me is the O2 campaign with Sean Bean. It uses a recognisable audio theme, with futuristic “looking forward” visuals and lots of happy people - O2 will look after you. The old Vodafone advert with the Dandy Warhols music was another inspiring ad that I bet sold a lot of contracts. Does the Citroen Ad sell more cars? Doubt it. And although the Megane ad with the lovely lady bums is very nice, I don’t see it drumming up more sales.

So what is the point of all that? Actually it was that the upshot is that I’ve found a website that tells you what music is used on all of the ads. it’s http://www.commercialbreaksandbeats.co.uk. It has a neat search facility, which you can use with iTunes to find, listen to and buy the tune without shelling for an album.

I ain’t buying new phones or cars, but it’s got me spending more at iTunes!

(Like I needed a reason)

So the “It’s showtime” event from Apple came and went yesterday, leaving me all a bit happy and sad. Happy because they have finally eliminated the gaps between songs on the iPod and Nano. Sad because it isn’t a firmware upgrade to existing machines and also because the new iPods have little else new about them to tempt me to buy one.

Sure the big daddy iPod is now 80gb with a better battery, but the screen is still the same size. There is some new search feature but really the way I manage my music I know where everything is so that’s of no use to me.

Nanos get an upgrade in memory and some whizzy new colours, neither of which affects me as I can fit all of my “in favour” music on a 4gb Nano without too much concern.

Now Steve Jobs did promise a media streamer in Q1/07. This could be the device I’ve been waiting for, with a simple Apple menu system, DRM-AAC compatible and quicktime video encoding all wirelessly streamed from PC to TV could be a winner, so I am looking forward to that. Also the upgrade of iTunes to version 7 has got some very neat features, such as a new view of your library that lets you flick through your album covers like old vinyl - lovely, and the fact that it now gets album art for you when it is missing. I tried this last night on a new album and it is quick.

So, a bit of a disappointment really as I was looking forward to getting a whizzy new iPod. Looks like my secret gadget fund will remain in tact until sometime next year…

Oh I forgot to mention that in the US you can now buy movies for your iPod the same day as the DVD comes out. But as this won’t hit UK shores until next year at the earliest, I couldn’t really care that much to comment.

Following my recent post about Star Trek, the side comment about Knight Rider has gotten me thinking. A cross between Knight Rider and Fast And The Furious would probably make a neat TV show.

That’s it, nothing more profound. Party over. There’s nothing to see here. Move along.